Customer Profiles

Customers

People Who Move the World: Kronoz

A drive towards continuous improvement and customer satisfaction lead Kronoz to choose technology that allowed them to work seamlessly.

Speaking with the staff at Kronoz, it instantly becomes clear that a drive towards continuous improvement – personal, professional, business-wide – inspires every member of the team at every level of the organization. The willingness and desire to go the extra mile has helped this young company establish a strong reputation as a provider of professional, market-leading service.

“It’s exciting, because [at my previous company], the changes were very gradual,” says Import Coordinator Laura Treviño. “Here, it’s a young company so the changes are faster. It’s good because you grow with the company at the same time.”

Kronoz was founded 15 years ago in Monterrey and has grown to encompass five offices in Mexico and two in the United States, with more than 100 staff across the organization. Operations Manager Fabiola Govea has been with the company for ten of those years and is still as enthusiastic about her job as when she started.

“I love that part of the job, operating and being in touch with the customers,” she says. “Different customers, different suppliers, it’s very interesting. It helps improve your skills, your character, your position in the company. It feels like you belong to the company, to that environment.”

Govea manages a team of Operations Executives, each of whom oversees an average of 80 shipments a month. Before they switched to CargoWise One, handling this volume and having visibility over her staff was next to impossible. “I use a lot of reporting in my area so I have to see information updated daily,” she says. “The last system we were using didn’t have the capacity to give us real information. If we wanted to save a lot of data in the system, we didn’t have that capacity.”

By contrast, the breadth and depth of information that CargoWise One can process, analyze, and store was a major reason that Kronoz decided to make the switch. “It gave us a lot of options for many areas, not just for operations, [but] for the commercial department, for the accounting department. CargoWise is a very complete system,” says Govea.

On a day-to-day basis, being able to keep information in the cloud and get instant access from anywhere in the world has made life significantly easier for Operations Executives such as Ilse Morales Robles. “The system provides you all the tools you need,” she says. “On one shipment, you can update all the documents - the entries, the shipping instructions, the master bill, the house bill, you can even add emails.”

Morales Robles believes that teamwork underpins the success of Kronoz. The close working relationships of the staff are not only supported by the strong personal connections that the company has fostered, but also the comprehensive information available in the system.

“I think that with most of the other forwarders, if [a particular] person is not in their desk, they cannot help you. Here in Kronoz, we always answer, ‘is there anything I can do for you?’. I know that everything is going to be in the system, so I can help him. That helps us a lot and the customer notices that.”

Kronoz’s mission is to exceed the needs and expectations of their customers. Morales Robles says that a fully-integrated system makes it easier than ever for her to find ways to delight her clients. “It can save us money and we can provide better service, extra service that we did not previously provide our customers. CargoWise One can help us because each customer has their special needs and we have all this information in the system. We can go beyond the expectations of our customers with the tools that CargoWise One has.”

Treviño says the greatest benefit of having all the information instantly updated and available in the system is managing issues before they get out of control or start affecting the company’s profit margins. “In CargoWise One, I can see everything is in order, and see more clearly if there’s something missing so I can attack the problem. If there’s an activity that is not closed and I know it’s important, I need to know in that moment. If I don’t have that visibility, I really cannot do my job,” she says.

Logistics is in Treviño’s blood. Both of her brothers work in her grandfather’s trucking business, one in sales and another as a logistics manager. She describes her own role in freight forwarding as the best of both worlds. “I talk with the customer and I do the logistics as well, so I’m in the middle. My favorite part of my job is to assist and help others. It’s rewarding because I know I’m doing something good.”

CargoWise One has helped her automate tasks and reduce mistakes. “I really like it because it does everything faster. We had to do reports manually. [Now] you can customize reports. You can just pull it out of the system and the customer gets it. There’s not human error any more in doing reports. It’s much, much easier and faster,” she says.

For Govea, the culture of Kronoz inspires her daily, and she’s motivated to help pass it on to the next generation of staff joining the company. “The people that work here are very sensitive, very respectful. I think that helps to create a good environment for the people that work here so I’m very happy. The employers treat them like they’re family and, the new people that are working here, I give them that sense of culture.”

She feels her success is intertwined with the company’s. “The future of Kronoz is growing. We want to expand our offices worldwide. Improving every day, every year, giving a good service. Not the same. Not, ‘I give you a good service, that’s it’. You have to give more than that.”

With technology, people, and culture working seamlessly together, the staff of Kronoz are motivated to be bigger and do better every day.

Kronoz Offers Customers:

Loose cargo and containers to project cargo and charters.

Air cargo delivery in the shortest time possible with competitive costs.

Land transport by truck or train inside or outside the country.

Specialized services for liquids, perishables, chemicals, and more.

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